As a young adult, my vision for my painting was to restore the third dimension to the painting space, and, to accomplish this I have focused on learning and then using the old master methods of indirect painting. My learning in the area is all self-taught through reading, observation and experimentation. Much of 20th century painting had been devoted to emphasizing the two-dimensional space of the picture plane and when I first began to paint, abstraction was still in vogue. Although there were practicing representational painters, for example Edward Hopper and Fairfield Porter among many others, the space in their paintings is still shallow, lacking air, light. I have long studied the work of Rembrandt and Italian Renaissance painters among others toward my goal. At the same time, I have also been a devoted student of Cezanne, Bonnard and Matisse. What I have realized is that my vision is to create a painting that exists as a melding of a three dimensional space and a two-dimensional construct (real and imagined worlds) using a variety of means such as line, overlapping planes, value, color relationships, atmospheric perspective, patterning, shape-state, the properties of oil paint (transparent vs. opaque, texture) to name just a few. My vision can never be completely realized, but it is an id
